I activated a credit card the other day via some happy go-getter in India who – toward the end of a completely confusing conversation – enthusiastically asked, “Have you seen Indiana Jones?”

In some alternate universe that question might have swept me into a web of intrigue on the Indian subcontinent. Only this wasn’t a fun alternate universe. It was this universe, the boring one where a holder of a once-American job speaks with an Indian accent on behalf of Citicorp while wondering if I have seen “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

And I had, but not because I actually needed to watch an old-time movie serial complete with cliff-hanging, snakes, giant red ants (oh no!), beautiful women, bad Ruskies and Harrison Ford. No, I saw it because I had to. More to the point, I saw it because my 14-year-old son had to.

And it was all that I expected, this energetic romp from a Downey sound stage (a shuttered aircraft plant) to the usual jungles with the usual burger chain and toy tie-ins and the boxed Raiders series sets.

I just wish that my lack of excitement about the fourth-best Raiders film ever wasn’t exacerbated by the Indian guy’s excited inquiry, which was itself exacerbated by how (he explained) “India gets the good movies last.”

There is, of course, nothing worse than that except maybe seeing a movie in its second weekend of release. Seriously, by then, who cares?

But India, for crying out loud! It’s not enough that local kids from Iceland to South Africa dress caps-backwards in American gang colors or that the vaunted “common culture” shared by all those Europeans working Euro Disney is wass-up American culture.

So there I was discussing good old Indy with a guy living half a planet away in a land once perceived – correctly or not – as the last truly exotic place on Earth. And I am far from comforted by this commonality, by this advertising-propelled homogenization that gives us a global Indiana Jones and “American Idol” with its crowning last week of one David Cook. In a world where everything is mass-marketed to death, this “discovery” of yet another lounge singer naturally made front pages from here to Berlin.

This (stop me if I’m harping) while things that actually mean something are ignored. War, for instance. And a presidential campaign where the McCain people e-mail me 20 times a day just in case I missed how their guy supports a war that 80 percent of Americans don’t. Still, a majority of Americans “trust” McCain, the man who disagrees with them most.

Which only proves that we pay attention to our own interests in the same way that we are paying attention to the newest reports stating that climate change over the next 25 years will increase U.S. crop failures as water supplies dwindle and forests fall to invasive insect species.

Then there was the all-but-ignored appearance last week of oil company executives in Washington, where they presented to a Senate panel the exact same dog-and-pony show that has toured since 1973. It’s comforting in its way when the pols ask how much these real Monopoly men make and the Monopoly men say they don’t know but it’s probably enough to buy Jamaica. Then the pols mention windfall taxes and the oil guys respond by asking why they can’t drill in the wilderness. With nobody mentioning that we can’t drill ourselves out of this problem.

It’s boring theater that gives all but the brain-dead a sense that something is actually being done. Then, in a month’s time, a back-page story will explain that no evidence of excessive profit-taking could be found.

Meanwhile, we just shut up and pay because I believe that it has finally struck us on some as yet unrealized level that the leadership needed to counter the energy conglomerates and implement an all-out energy policy isn’t going to come now or ever because we lack will.

So it’s “American Idol” and the Lakers, neither of which have any real bearing on our lives. But they seem to because the slow downward spiral that began when we confused notoriety with fame picked up speed when it hit the hot wax of meaningless spectacle.

Look at us. “Gypsy,” “Boeing-Boeing” and “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof” are playing Broadway while “A Chorus Line” opens at the Ahmanson. What year is this?

Oh, and prepare yourself for the remarketing of dead Frank Sinatra with more boxed CDs and TV tributes to come. Though Nancy Sinatra doesn’t want a movie because it might dwell on “bad things.”

And I swear, if I hear one more word about my gen-gen-generation, I’m going to scream. Have we had enough Hendrix, Joplin and the Beatles yet? And what happened 40 years ago that caused so many of us to grow white goatees and buy big fat Harleys? I’ve also had enough of big fat Harleys, 1957 Chevys and the looks (James Dean, hippie, punk) that we wear according to our moods.

And maybe I wouldn’t mind this constant worldwide marketing diversion, this full inundation of bland, predictable, and tedious spectacle if it included chariot races and gladiators, you know, some real-deal death in place of all the bloodless fish swimming our way.

Seriously, Indiana Jones? And will its somewhat disappointing opening weekend box office make Steven Spielberg’s collection of borrowed and recycled gimmicks more millions? Gosh, I hope so because these things are so expensive. In fact, it’s hardly worth doing anything that doesn’t emerge flat-footed from dead ideas and a proven franchise.

Like India. India used to be a franchise, a brand all its own before it went to work for Citicorp and started buying Indy Jones lunchboxes like everyone else.

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